In recent years there has been a great increase in the number and diversity of interactive information response applications, such as voice response, accessible through automated telephone systems. These interactive response applications allow a caller to obtain information, purchase goods, and conduct financial transactions through a series of scripted menus or options that offer the caller a variety of selections from which to choose. The incoming caller responds to menu voice or other data prompts either by pressing numbers on a telephone keypad (DTMF inputs) or by speaking a specific word or words or by requesting other data from a processor. The incoming server then decodes the response to determine which menu choice the caller selected. Depending on the complexity of the applications selected by the caller, he or she may be required to interact with many different levels of menu choices in order to properly access and obtain the desired information.
As the number of applications accessible through such systems increases, and as the complexity of individual applications increases, the menu lengths correspondingly increase. The result is that incoming callers frequently spend a considerable amount of time interacting with and selecting menu choices even if they are only accessing only a single application.
The obvious drawback is that the maximum throughput of a server decreases as the length and complexity of the menus increases. The call handling capability (or bandwidth) of a server is limited by the number of phone lines coupled to the server and the incoming rate and average duration of calls received by the server. As the average duration of the calls increases, less calls may be serviced, thereby reducing the throughput of the server.
To compensate for this, some automated telephone systems are augmented by simply adding additional incoming telephone lines to an existing server, or adding additional servers, or both. Obviously, this solution is expensive because of the increased costs of purchasing new equipment, maintaining a greater amount of equipment, and paying service charges for additional telephone line connections.
An alternative method for increasing or maintaining the throughput of a server is to decrease the average duration of incoming telephone calls. To do this, prior art systems have employed voice-scripted menus that informed the caller that a menu selection may be made at any time during the recitation of the menu, and not merely at the end of the menu. Thus, rather than listen to a menu that explains 7 or 8 possible selections, a caller who has used the system in the past may immediately press a desired selection without wasting the time that is required to listen to the entire menu. One drawback to this, however, is that even frequent system users often forget the order in which menus are presented, as well as the individual selections within each menu, and frequently enter a premature and incorrect entry. This usually requires the caller to start over.
A less obvious drawback to this method of reducing the average call duration is that callers who frequently use multiple applications each time they call the server must repeatedly branch back to the introductory menu for each application desired. For example, a caller who wishes to use three different applications can immediately choose the first application without listening to the entire menu. When the caller has concluded the first transaction, the caller must then branch back to the introductory menu in order to select the second desired application. This process is then repeated for the third application. Thus, even when a caller is allowed to make a selection at any time during a menu, the caller must still loop through a menu several times in order to use multiple applications. Therefore, the average call duration is still not minimized.
There is therefore a need in the art for an interactive voice response system that increases the throughput of telephone calls handled by response systems without increasing the number of servers or the number of incoming telephone lines.
There is a further need in the art for a response system that reduces the average duration of incoming telephone calls without relying on the memory abilities of callers.
There is a still further need in the art for an interactive voice response unit that can detect aberrant or unusual usage patterns for a particular customer account and send a warning alarm to that particular customer or system administrator.